Tuesday, 20 May 2014

AFTER THE EU Court of
Justice’s (ECJ) ruling earlier this week, Google’s Executive Chairman Eric
Schmidt has said the European court struck the wrong balance when it made its
decision on personal privacy.

Responding to a question asked
at the company’s annual shareholder meeting, Schmidt said the case reflects a
“collision between a right to be forgotten and a right to know,” and that the
company believed “the balance that was struck [by the ECJ] was wrong.”

He said that since Google
isn’t a media company, it is not protected under European data protection law
and could have serious implications for the company.

Google’s Chief Legal Officer,
David Drummond, told investors that it was still analysing the decision and the
impact it could have for the search engine, but described it as
“disappointing,” and said it “went too far.”

The ruling by the ECJ will
force Google to remove links to content about a person, under certain
conditions, if they submit an application
to have it removed. The company would then have to weigh up whether that
information is in the public interest and whether it should stay.

Google currently dominates the
search engine space in Europe, claiming more than 90 per cent of search and vastly
outperforming rivals like Bing and Yahoo.